Focal Points
by liptonrm
Summary: Chloe has finally had enough.


Title: Focal Points

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't want and wish it'd just get out of my head.

Author's Note: This story is AU and inspired by a fic challenge issued by mimesere who wondered how many fandoms could be inserted into Verona Beach, the setting of Baz Luhrmann's _Romeo and Juliet_. I thought Chloe would fit right in.

Chloe never remembered how she found her way to Verona Beach. The days blended together into memories of bleached out beaches and margaritas drunk under the blistering sun. The nights slipped into a blurry focused snapshot of smoke filled clubs and pulse pounding rhythms. She lost herself in the heat of the dance and chemical oblivion. She wasn't Chloe Sullivan, girl reporter, friend betrayer, Luthor pawn anymore and she discovered that her new freedom was more liberating then any of the drugs she sniffed during those long, hot nights. She didn't regret, she didn't second-guess, she just lived and lived and lived and tried like hell to forget everything she had been and all the shit she had done. It just felt so good.

She should've known that it couldn't last. She should've known that fucking Clark Kent, the fucking saviour of mankind wouldn't let it last. Of course he had to save her, of course he couldn't just let well enough alone.

"Chloe, what are you doing?" He had asked her, his voice waking her up with the sun pouring in through her window bleaching all of the color out of the room, dulling his eyes and making her head pound with a new intensity. Maybe the pain would just fucking stop if her heart quit beating.

"What do you want Clark?" she groaned. All she wanted to do was close her eyes, pull the pillow over her face and drift away.

"You need to come home, Chloe. Your dad's worried about you." He paused, waiting for her to respond. They stood there, the rumble of traffic flowing by the window, the sound of retching filtering in from the apartment next-door. "I'm worried about you." Clark whispered awkwardly into the silence.

Chloe sat up, fury and exasperation etching lines onto her face, lines that Clark had never noticed before. The sunlight glowed around her and suddenly, irrationally, he was afraid. "You're worried?" Chloe laughed, the sound harsh and grating. "That's rich, Kal." She spit the name out with venom and took bitter pleasure from the involuntary flinch her barb caused. "You never cared how much I worried about you, you've never considered my feelings so I don't see why I should give a rat's ass about your's."

"I can fix this, I can make everything better, I promise." Clark implored. "Just come home and everything'll be all right."

"You'll make it better? You'll fix it?" She wanted to scream, images of picking up that baseball bat under her bed and beating Clark to a bloody pulp flashed enticingly through her mind. "What if there's nothing to fix, what if this is exactly what I want. You can't save me if I'm not in trouble. Why don't you just go home, I'm sure Lana's starting to miss her most faithful stalker." She had gotten up and was somehow standing right in front of Clark, her breath coming in ragged gasps, she could feel the blood pumping hot in her face and she could see the indecision, the fear stabbing through Clark's eyes. She had never felt more powerful, more alive. "Just go home." She demanded, her eyes locked solidly into his.

She felt a momentary pang at the lost look that flashed through Clark's normally solid and determined eyes. She put her hand on Clark's chest, not thinking about what she was about to do, not angsting over the paths she could or could not take. "Or you could stay here, with me." She whispered, her voice low and seductive. And she felt a new kind of power as she saw the temptation in his eyes, the roiling desire that burned between them for long, drawn out seconds and was doused suddenly, irrevocably when Clark stepped back into a shadowed corner.

"I can't, I won't, not again." Clark asserted, his voice confident and self-righteous. "I'm sorry Chloe." And between one heartbeat and the next he was gone as if he had never been there in the first place.

Chloe blinked, clearing her sun-strained eyes. She stood there, frozen in the over-whelming heat, lost in the blinding light.


End file.
